In a location adjacent to a place in a city of some significance, what comes out of my head is plastered on the walls of this blog.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Childhood memories of music.

In one of the more positive WTF?! moments of my life, two respected soundtrack labels have released CDs of two of the first scores that I ever noticed in the film.

When I was but a lad, I was obsessed with watching cartoons on TV (my, how things have changed...). Every so often, I would run across a number of movies, some I probably shouldn't have been watching (Better Off Dead) and some I really shouldn't have been watching (Class of Nuke 'em High, Critters). One that didn't quite scar me was the 1986 adventure-comedy, Short Circuit, the third part of director John Badham's unofficial military hardware gone amok trilogy (following Blue Thunder and WarGames).

Two decades on, I remember quite a bit about the film, like the Three Stooges routine, the amusing (if questionable) character of Ben Jabituya and David Shire's score, which Varese Sarabande released through their CD Club (and, as of this point in time, the only one of yesterday's releases not to sell out or be in danger of doing so). The score contains the end credits song "Come and Follow Me", which, I only recently noticed, is used as a motif throughout the score, from a light variation of Number 5 discovering the world to a driving action melody for the truck chase. Though not one of the Shire masterpieces (I did manage to discover the significantly superior The Taking of Pelham One Two Three in the intervening years), praise be to Varese for delivering this sentimental favorite of mine.

Years later, I happened upon the Encore network, which showed movies from the 60s, 70s and 80s and featured a number of hosts introducing the movies (again, how times have changed...only not so sarcastically, this time out). One of those movies was Nine to Five. It's not quite as well-remembered as Short Circuit, but several aspects stick in the memory, like the various fantasies of the three leads, one of my all-time favorite movie lines* and Charles Fox's score. The music was originally released on an LP, but Intrada has rescued it from obscurity, providing listeners a chance to hear it on CD. The baroque trumpet of "Violet Steals Body". The Western-flavored "Dora Lee's Fantasy". The soap opera-esque "Ajax Warehouse". The delightful title song (which lost the Oscar to "Fame"...I don't know why, either). The action-packed "Judy's Fantasy" (with a shooting gallery gag that's perhaps one of my favorite parts of the score). The bubbly "Violet's Fantasy". I can't thank Intrada enough for this (among other things).

I can only assume coincidence...or they've been mining my subconscious for new release ideas. A release of John Morris' High Anxiety would've confirmed the latter.

* - "Now I've got a gun in my purse and up to now, I've been forgivin' and forgettin' 'cause of the way I was brought up, but if you say another word about me or make me another indecent proposal, I'm gonna get that gun of mine, and I'm gonna change you from a rooster to a hen with one shot!"